I finished the book LOVE WINS, by Ron Bell. I am sharing from just the forward and the very last page. I’m reading it again...immediately. It is less than 200 pages, but packed a powerful punch for me. I hope one day my boys will read it because wow....- it’s simply the real deal. Unfortunately a lot of their experience of Christianity was mostly church and it’s pastors and members arguing about how to worship, read and learn Christ and the Bible and people vying for power in the church hierarchies. Most of them had the best of intentions, and while I believe that churches do reach and help people for their cause, their humanities of pride and prejudice can wound and actually orchestrate others to walk away from having anything to do with it. Below is just some of the beginning and the end, that put words to my feelings. I can’t recommend it enough:
I believe that Jesus’ story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love and it is for everybody, everywhere.
That’s the story.
“For God so loved the world...”
That’s why Jesus came.
That’s His message.
That’s where the life is found.
I am acutely aware that Jesus’ story has been hijacked by a # of other stories, stories Jesus isn’t interested in telling, because they have nothing to do with what He came to do. The plot has been lost and it’s time to reclaim it.
This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering # of pp h/b taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell w/no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy.
2ndly, the kind of faith Jesus invites us into doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell, but takes us deep into the heart of them.
Many have these questions.
Christians.
people who aren’t Christians,
people who were Christians, but can’t do it anymore because of questions about these very topics,
people who think Christians are delusional and profoundly misguided.
pastors, leaders, preachers, counselors, etc. etc.
I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the poems of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question He’s asked with...a question: “What do you think? How do you read it?” He asks over and over again.
The ancient sages said the words of the sacred text were red and black letters on a white page--there’s all that white space, waiting to be filled with our responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insights. We read the words and then enter into the discussion that has been going on for thousands of years across cultures and continents.
The great thing about God and Jesus is that there is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous. At the same time, some issues aren’t as big as people have made them. Much blood has been spilled in church splits, heresy trials and raging debates over issues that are, in the end, not that essential. Sometimes what we we are witnessing is simply a massive exercise in missing the point. Jesus frees us to call things what they are.
Nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested or celebrated by many before Ron Bell. He hasn’t come up with a radical new teaching that’s any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold # of times. That’s the beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith. It’s a deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives and experiences.
If his book, then does nothing more than introduce us to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multi-voiced complexity? Awesome!
May we experience this vast,
expansive, infinite, indestructible love
that has been ours all along.
To discover that this love is as wide
as the sky and as small as the cracks in
our hearts that no one else knows about.
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